It is rare that at the age of eighty and after publishing sixteen books – a mixture of novels, short story collections, and non-fiction – that an author comes into the light of the public consciousness and begins to find notoriety. But the works of Gerald Murnane have begun to garner considerable interest in recent…
With just under a month to go until the ABIA Awards Night on May 2nd in Sydney, the folks at the Australian Publishers Association have whittled down the longlisted titles to what is an admittedly still healthy six titles per category. The ABIA Awards celebrate the very best of Australia’s literary scene, heralding the achievements of authors, publishers,…
Edited by Maxine Beneba Clarke, with Magan Magan and Ahmed Yussuf, Growing Up African in Australia is a new anthology from Black Inc., following on from Alice Pung’s Growing Up Asian in Australia, Benjamin Law’s Growing Up Queer in Australia and Anita Heiss’ Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia. Whilst, Carly Findlay, who also contributed to this…
At an event held last night ats Art Centre Melbourne, the $50,000 Stella Prize was announced. First time author Vicki Laveau-Harvie snapped up the title, for her dark, yet moving, memoir The Erratics. It is the first time a memoir has won the prize and only the second time it has been awarded to a…
If there were a title for Grand Master of narrative fiction then the undisputed champion would be Janet Malcolm. This American author has been writing since the 1960’s when she first began with The New Yorker. The author of several books, her latest one, Nobody’s Looking At You, focuses on recent times by drawing together…
David Cullen, author of the definitive bestseller Columbine, returns with a second book, this time detailing the story of the events surrounding the Parkland, Florida school shooting in February 2018, the extraordinary teenage survivors and the March For Our Lives (MFOL) campaign that followed. In Parkland, Cullen takes the readers inside the school in the…
Melina Marchetta’s novels are often about the boy or girl who lives next door. Her book, Looking for Alibrandi, was a perfect example of this and continues to find new audiences, some thirty years after it was released. Marchetta’s latest novel, The Place on Dalhousie, takes a leaf out of her previous works by reprising…
The unnamed protagonist of Carrie Tiffany’s new novel, Exploded View, lets us into her life by increments. Immediately, as readers, we are welcomed into her interior world– a place where the only things that make sense are cars, and engines. It is the late 1970’s, and the girl and her brother watch things like Hogan’s Heroes on the TV, careful…
Relationship advisor Zoë Foster Blake takes us on an enthusiastic journey through matters of the heart and offers a fresh perspective in her new reference guide: Love! The book offers hints, solutions and ideas on how to deal with many of the issues us women experience when dating, whilst also giving some insight into why we…
Since 2008, the Indie Book Awards have been celebrating both the work of independent Aussie booksellers and the books they’ve raved about to customers over the previous year. Last night, the 2019 winners were announced, with Trent Dalton’s coming of age tale Boy Swallows Universe taking out the top honour of Book of the Year.Speaking…
Washed ashore on the island of Janda Baik, sisters Muni and Satki have no memory of their former lives. Mak Genggang, the region’s foremost witch, knows a curse when she sees it and in the mortal Muna and the magical Satki, it’s clear as day to her what has happened. Unable, or unwilling, to answer…
Underdog is a collection of short stories, collected from upcoming and unpublished Australian YA fiction writers. Edited by (and featuring contributions from) Tobias Madden and Sarah Taviana, Underdog celebrates a uniquely Australian genre, one as diverse and emotive as the country in which it is written. Featuring twelve short stories, Underdog is the first #LoveOzYA…
The Stella Prize judges have revealed the six authors who have made it to their 2019 shortlist. Timing the announcement with International Women’s Day, judging panel chair Louise Swinn described the chosen works as “an incredibly diverse knot of books. […] The books on this shortlist inform and entertain, and while they speak absolutely to our…
The Australian Book Industry Awards are back again for 2019! An initiative of the Australian Publishers Association, the ABIAs applaud the achievements of writer, illustrator, publicist and publisher alike. A 250 strong team, made up of representatives across the industry, came together to craft this latest longlist, celebrating the bookish best of 2018. The 2019…
Art dealer Alex Clayton is back, and conservator best friend John Porter and faithful hound Hogarth aren’t too far behind either. Invited to preview a new exhibition at the Melbourne International Museum of Art, they’re present to see museum staff unveil a supposedly cursed painting. But when one of the workers collapses and damages the…
Monica Tan’s first novel, Stranger Country, will take you on a 30,000km journey of discovery around selected parts of Australia. Tan is Chinese Australian, but at thirty-two, felt that she didn’t know as much about Australia’s history as she did about China’s. In a bid to change that, Tan embarked on a journey around parts…
Whilst he was in the country for both Perth Writers Week and Adelaide Writers’ Week, I had the chance to sit down with author, poet and Man Booker Prize winning novelist Ben Okri to chat about his new novel The Freedom Artist. Set in a world uncomfortably like our own, The Freedom Artist is a…
1917. At Blackwater Abbey in Devon, a storm is brewing. Lord and Lady Highmount invite renowned mediums, bereaved parents, and one troubled young soldier into their home, all in the hopes of contacting their sons, lost to the war ravaging Europe – much of it powered by the Highmounts’ own armaments. Thrust unexpectedly into their…
Highway Bodies, the second novel from author Alison Evans, hit bookstore shelves earlier this month. AU Reviewer Jodie had the chance to chat to the writer about their latest work, a unique slice of Aussie YA fiction, which pits a diverse group of teens against seemingly impossible, zombie-riddled odds. First, can you tell us a…
The year is 1936 and inside the Buckingham Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, the party is in full swing. But it’s more than dancing partners and waiters armed with fresh champagne doing the rounds here. With Britain keeping one eye firmly on the rising European fascists, the business of buying and selling secrets is booming – and…
It’s the event that kicks off the writers’ festival circuit every year, and Perth Festival’s faithful will tell you it’s one of the best in Australia. Under the stewardship of new program curator, William Yeoman, the Perth Writers Festival has seen some changes in the last two years- most notably a change of name to…
Eccentric, heartbreaking and hilarious- this is how Debra Adelaide‘s latest book of short stories is described on the cover by her Picador stable-mate, Jennifer Mills. The book is Zebra and Other Stories, a collection comprised of fourteen stories, divided into three sections: First, Second and Third. These sections refer to the point of view taken in the stories. Adelaide covers a…
The $50,000 Stella Prize celebrates literature penned by Australian women. First awarded in 2013, the Stella Prize is named for My Brilliant Career author Stella Maria Sarah ‘Miles’ Franklin, and has become a landmark prize in the Australian literary scene. This year, some 170 entries were narrowed down to just twelve, with every longlisted author…
Changelings, or babies swapped with supernatural beings in their infancy, permeate the mythology of a number of cultures throughout Europe. Often, it was believed that fairies had taken the child and left one of their own behind- a sign of bad luck for the family. The idea of a changeling may have been used to…
No one is really sure how it started. Random attacks. Censored news reports. Curfews and evacuations. The internet stopping. And then there’s Rhea and Jojo’s mother going missing. Band members Dee, Poppy, Zufan, and Jack’s creative retreat cut short by power outages. And an unnamed teen facing down her own family, who are literally about…
The entire time that I was reading Markus Zusak’s new novel, Bridge of Clay, I had Josh Pyke’s song “Feet of Clay” going around and around in my head. Perhaps, this has only strengthened my belief that the entire novel is really some sort of extended metaphor, although for what exactly I couldn’t say. One…
An Open Book, published late last year, is the eleventh collection of poetry from David Malouf, and his third in the last ten years. Prior to this collection I only really knew of Malouf in his capacity as a writer of prose and short stories. As it turns out he is equally adept in many…
Robert Ian Bonnick is a warrior. This successful man has had a career that most people could only dream of. But, what some of us may not know is that he had to overcome extreme adversity and challenges in order to get there. In his debut book, Soul Survivor, he describes his own personal rags-to-riches…
Established in 2008, the Indie Book Awards recognise and celebrate both best in Australian writing as well as the country’s most passionate independent booksellers. This year’s nominations include Markus Zusak‘s Bridge of Clay, his first novel since global phenomenon The Book Thief was published in 2005 and Jessica Townsend‘s Wundersmith, the sequel to last year’s Nevermoor, which…
In the summer of 1968, Evelyn Lynden and her husband Lenny move to Evergreen Valley, California so that Lenny can work as an orderly in an asylum- part of the agreement he has made as a conscientious objector, so that he does not have to go over and fight in the Vietnam War. Their arrival…
